Friday, May 16, 2014

The British Library has opened up a vast online collection of literary treasures and scholarly articles via its new website, Discovering Literature, in a bid to pique young students' interest in classic books.
The new project covers the Romantic and Victorian periods, from William Blake to the science fiction of H G Wells. However, the British Library aims to extend this online collection up to present day authors and as far back in time as the Old English epic Beowulf.
Among the artefacts digitalised for the first time are Jane Austen's notebooks, the childhood works of the Brontë sisters, manuscripts by Keats, Wordsworth and many others plus intriguing early drafts of William Blake's classic poems 'Tyger Tyger' and 'London'. (...)
The British Library has also attempted to make classic books seem less unassailable to students by pointing to the negative responses these works attracted in their day. The collection includes a pamphlet vehemently defending the Clergy Daughters' School, an institution attended by both Brontë sisters and widely believed to have been attacked in Jane Eyre as Lowood School. The founder Rev H Shepheard thunders: "the charges made against the school and its founder are erroneous and unjust ... uncontradicted calumnies." (Iona McLaren)

This is a list of the more than sixty Brontë-related entries to be found there (including Emily Brontë's diary, 1837, for instance):